Kinsey Tent Show - News5

The Madge Kinsey Players open in Van Wert, Ohio, for a midsummer evening's
entertainment. Tent shows are often the only "live" talent small towns
ever see

Pix #2 - Dorie Field of the Kinsey Players and some of her puppets. She's
checking the phony hen that lays a phony egg. (Photo unavailable - if
anyone has access to this article and the photo, please contact Carol
Wangler cwangler@wcnet.org)

Madge Kinsey Graf, once billed as the "Phenomenal Child Artist," has trouped
all her life.

Otto Imig, second from left below, plays thepopular "Toby" role in a Kinsey
scene

HITS in the TALL CORN By VANCE JOHNSON (Collier's for August 20, 1949)

Long ago Broadway and Hollywood posted the death notice for the repertory
theater, but out in the great midlands tent shows are still playing to
standing room only.

The author, a Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle,
has been a newspaperman for 20 years. He has been interested in tent shows
ever since the day he saw the Sadler company as a boy in Texas.

This summer, out in the "tall grass country," a grand old American institution
long since given up for dead by Broadway and Hollywood is still going
strong. It is the repertory theater.

Generally it holds forth under a gaudy red and blue tent like the big
top of the circus, appears every Monday morning in perhaps half a hundred
small cities and towns in the heart of America, stays for a week, offers
a new play "each and every evening," and moves on.

Repertory's custodians are a sturdy band of professionals who have been
beating the hinterland trail for well over a quarter of a century regardless
of depression and war. While Broadway mourns for the "days that were"
and nearly every season launches a highly publicized but singularly unsuccessful
attempt to "revive" repertory, and while earnest and artful--and subsidized--groups
struggle mightily to "keep the drama alive" in old barns, circular theaters
and the like, these hardy troupers go about their business as if no one
had ever questioned their likelihood of success.

With them, repertory is not a lark or an experiment; it is an established,
regular and profitable way of life. They just set up their tents on vacant
lots, school campuses and fair grounds in Ohio, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Nebraska,
Texas and a few other near-by states and watch the quarters and half dollars
roll in.

On a hot evening last summer, when I caught up with the Schaffner Players
at Lewistown, Missouri, I found them playing to an audience that outnumbered
the population of the town by at least 300. A week later, at Goodland,
Indiana (population 1,000), I saw another company doing the same thing.
Fully, 1,300 people who had come for miles around the town were watching
the antics of two of their favorite comedians, "Toby" and Ora Slout.

In Quincy, Illinois, a city of 40,000 which saw its last legitimate theater
converted into a movie house nearly two decades ago, seats for the Schaffner
show were so hard come by this summer that queues started forming in the
middle of the afternoon. Hundreds had to be turned away.

In these towns, repertory is an old and respected friend. Schaffner,
Slout, the Roberson-Gifford Players in Wisconsin, Bisbee's Comedians in
Tennessee and many others have played the same towns year after year for
a quarter of a century. This year the Madge Kinsey Payers in Ohio are
celebrating their 61st year of repertory; this in the 44th year for the
Harry O. Brown Players in Wisconsin, the 40th year for Harry Hugo in Nebraska
and the 38th year for Jack and Maud Brooks in Wisconsin.

Madge Kinsey Graf, the lighthearted, shrewd, reigning queen of the Kinsey
clan, was billed as "Baby Madge, Phenomenal Child Artist" in her father's
Kinsey Komedy Kompany in 1901. She hasn't missed a season since and she
fully expects the Kinsey name to go trouping up and down the Ohio for
at least two more generations. She expects her daughters and sons-in-law--Betty
and Jack Murdock and Jean and Pep Graves--to step into the management
before too many years. And just before the season opened this year Betty
presented her with a grandson who unquestionably soon will become another
"phenomenal child artist."

Most of the tent shows travel over a relatively small "established territory,"
moving 30 to 40 miles every Sunday night. With a few exceptions, none
of them travels more than about 1,200 mile a season.

All of the managers and many of the married performers live in house
trailers on the show lots, and in the smaller towns the others usually
find lodging in private residences. During a weeks stand they get to know
the "towners" well and more than a few lasting friendships are made.

A Tent Showman's Farewell Tour

Many tent show performers are as revered in their territories as John
Barrymore ever was on Broadway. When Harley Sadler, a famous Texas tent
showman, made his farewell tour a couple of years ago--retiring after
30--banquets and luncheons were given in his honor almost everywhere he
stopped.

In Littlefield, Texas, he was greeted by a group of dignitaries who had
flown there in private planes from all over the state. At Lubbock, the
merchants gave him a $500 gold watch.

"I can't do business with you any more," a candy salesman complained
to Sadler one day. "You're always holding court."

The sale of prize candy is a standard procedure with all tent shows.
Sadler's candy spiel was typical.

"You never can tell what you will get out of this candy," he would say.
"Two years ago a boy and a girl found prize coupons in their candy. The
boy's called for a pair of lady's hose and the girl's called for a safety
razor. I suggested that they exchange, which they did-and that was how
they met. They got married and last night they came to the show. With
them was a bouncing baby boy. You never can tell what you will get out
of this candy."

Literally hundreds of young married couples who first entered Sadler's
"tent theater beautiful" in their parents' arms have brought their own
children to see his plays. In Lewistown I heard three different people
tell Neil Schaffner they had not missed a single performance of his show
in the 26 years he had played their town.

In most of the towns "tent show week" is something like fair week or
an especially long community picnic. The shows are a combination of circus,
carnival, variety hall and legitimate theater. Except for the "dramatic
end," which houses the stage, the tent resembles a circus tent. The seats
are only as soft as the pine out of which they are made; candy, popcorn
and peanuts are as much as part of the show as the actors.

Twenty years ago nearly all of the shows carried a band which played
for a street parade and a concert in front of the tent. Most of them still
have orchestras (the actors double in brass) and all still offer vaudeville
between the acts. An extra-price "concert" after the main show is standard.

But with all of them the play always has been, and still is, the mainspring.

In the second decade of the century, as the movies began to take over
opera houses, the resident companies merely transferred their standard
repertories to a canvas theater. All of them played such familiar numbers
as East Lynne, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Over the Hill to the Poorhouse, and
Lena Rivers. But often they aspired to finer things. Ben Howe, an old-time
rep actor who now manages an apartment house in Chicago, says he once
played Damon and Pythias on a tent show stage.

In 1904, when Sarah Bernhardt got into a row with the owners of a string
of theaters in Texas, she rented a big tent and completed her tour under
it. She played Camille in French at a top of $2. The Sport North Company,
a tent repertory company which toured Kansas and Texas every summer until
1920 (then Ted North, son of one of the brothers, took over for the next
19 years), followed Bernhardt with Camille in English at a 50-cent top--and
did turnaway business.

When the old favorites were worn thin, many of the companies lifted successful
New York plays outright. It is said that one Chicago "play bureau" cleaned
up by sending stenographers to the theater to take down the dialogue of
the new plays, doing a slight rewrite and selling the scripts to tent
show managers. But, as audiences became more exacting and the dangers
of copyright infringement became greater, most of the companies turned
exclusively to royalty plays.

Because many of the traveling troupes were small, gave cheap plays on
tiny stages, under bare white lights and before single, "diamond dye"
sets (scenery which could be folded for easy transport), Broadway considered
tent repertory an uncouth and insignificant part of the American theater.
But in their heyday--from about 1917 to 1930--many of the better tent
shows went to great expense to give their audiences settings, stage effects
and acting which would have been a credit to any theater anywhere in the
country.

Managers of the large tent troupes, which had companies ranging from
40 to 75 people, made annual pilgrimages to New York and Chicago to keep
up to date on settings, lighting and other technical aspects of the theater.
Many of the new techniques they saw were promptly put to use under canvas.
A few years ago, Pearle Wilson, who acted in tent repertory for more than
30 years (with Murphy's Comedians, Sadler and other first-rate companies),
went to New York for the first time in several seasons. Naturally she
"caught" most of the hit plays. What she saw amazed her.

"I went to Harvey and Oklahoma!, among others," she said. "The way some
of the minor roles were played was a disgrace to the profession, and a
good tent show never would have permitted lighting like they had in Oklahoma!--where
the actors threw shadows on the backdrop, which was a field of grain.
I felt so let down!"

Road Life Wasn't Too Bad

Because a good number of the shows were on the road 40 to 50 weeks a
year and because working conditions were good, pay regular and living
costs in the small towns low, managers found little difficulty in obtaining
competent performers in the early years of repertory. Many of them, particularly
married couples, preferred a long season oat $40 to $50 a week to the
gamble of frequent separations and long periods of unemployment in New
York. And as the movies replaced vaudeville, the better tent shows attracted
many a headline act.

During the twenties, several of the tent shows gave creditable performances
of such New York successes as "Rain, The Old Soak, Lightnin', The Goose
Hangs High, The Cat and The Canary, Applesauce. The Gorilla, and Up in
Mabel's Room. But the standard fare, then and now, was a light, popular
comedy built around the antics of a redheaded, freckle-faced country bumpkin
invariably known as Toby.

The Toby character is quite as old as the English-speaking stage. William
in Shakespeare's As You Like It and Abel Drugger in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist
were Tobies. But tent showmen generally agree that it was Frederick R.
Wilson of Oklahoma who made Toby a hero.

As the story goes, one night in Louisiana Wilson appeared as Toby Haxton
in Clouds and Sunshine. The next night he was Toby Green In Out of the
Fold--and boys on the street began calling him Toby. When the time came
for Won by Waiting, in which Wilson played Bud, he renamed the character
Toby. Before long he was known far and wide as "Toby" Wilson, and most
other repertory comedians followed his example of making the character
a standard feature in every comedy. "Rep" playwrights could not turn out
"Toby plays" fast enough to meet the demand.

Because of their tremendous popularity with rural and small-town audiences,
"Toby comedians" became indispensable members of every tent repertory
company, so much so that more than one company was thrown on the rocks
when its comedian quit in a huff. Many of the Tobies, including Sadler,
Schaffner and Wilson, started their own shows and many a manager became
a Toby in self-defense.

Although almost all Tobies still wear a red wig, affect freckles, peaked
eyebrows and a raspberry mouth, and indulge in the most grotesque costumes,
Toby necessarily is a different kind of bumpkin in every part of the country.
L. Verne "Toby" Slout goes in for slapstick. "Boob" Brasfield, Bisbee's
veteran comedian, and Neil Schaffner rely on comic situations, pantomime
and surprise for their laughs. Both ad-lib freely and like nothing better
than to "break up" another member of the cast, getting everybody on stage
and off laughing together.

Other Tobies rely heavily on gag lines and still others--like Otto Imig,
the quiet, unassuming comic who has been a mainstay of the Madge Kinsey
Players for 15 years--play what might be described as a "sympathetic Toby."
Situations and bits of business which Schaffner and "Denny" Dennis wow
them with in Iowa would fall flat if Brasfield used them in Tennessee,
and vice versa. Words and actions have to be suited to the locale.

Over the years this has necessitated a great deal of rewriting of the
standard Toby plays, and many others as well to make them more suitable
vehicles for cast and territory. Corn belt colloquialisms are not at all
funny in Tennessee and the dry cow-country witticisms which send the customers
rolling in Texas are almost incomprehensible to Ohio farmers or factory
workers.

Time has Matured Toby

Moreover, because the Toby comedians have grown older every year--most
of them are now past fifty--the Toby character has had to grow up from
the impertinent, precocious boy of two decades ago to the bumbling, homely
hired hand of today.

Many repertory managers have written, produced, directed and acted in
a high percentage of their plays. Often it is difficult to recognize a
play after a half dozen managers have reworked it to get in local color
and comedy situations, and to make the characters fit the cast at hand.

Because of this, the tent show probably is the nearest thing we have
to a genuine American folk theater.

Some actor-manager-writers have sought to do serious work. But light
entertainment always has been, and still is, the main objective of the
tent show.

"Our mission," says Neil Schaffner, "is to bring laughter and forgetfulness
to thousands of people whose lives are drab and unexciting, made up mostly
of tragedy and care."

The tent shows dish out corn by the stageful. The wrongdoer always must
be foiled and virtue must triumph. J. B. Rotnour, veteran Illinois tent
showman says, "The more hokum we give them, the better."

But a great concentration of corn, the tent showmen argue, does not necessarily
mean an absence of good theater. Some of the most beloved figures of the
entertainment world have been successful purveyors of corn--Ed Wynn and
the late W. C. Fields, to mention a couple.

"People don't come to tent shows for an uplift or to hear a penetrating
commentary on some of the foibles of our society," says Schaffner. "They
come to have a good time."

A former president of the University of Texas, who was an inveterate
Sadler fan, once put it in more homely terms, "I don't come here to think--I
come here for a belly laugh."

"You must remember," says Schaffner, "that a tent show audience is made
up of children and adults, farmers and factory workers, doctors and professors.
You have to please them all--and in doing it you must work against all
kinds of distraction, from crying babies to the rustling of popcorn sacks.
Consequently, tent show plays have got to have a lot of plot. Speeches
have to be short, and their points obvious. Action has to be fast and
it must never hesitate."

The truth of this observation was proved painfully a couple of years
ago by a group which started out from Tennessee for a tour of the South
and Southwest with an "all-Broadway" repertoire: Arsenic and Old Lace,
Kiss and Tell and Over 21. It was one of the most sensational flops in
recent theatrical history.

"Not one day have we come anywhere near cracking the nut (making expenses)."
Joe McKinnon wrote to the trade paper Billboard. "In eight weeks we have
showed to less than 4,000 paid admissions and our (nightly) seating capacity
is more than 1,600."

The fact that these plays, successes on Broadway and in the large cities
of the Middle West and East, failed in the South and Southwest when presented
under canvas was undoubtedly due to the basically different tastes of
the respective audiences, but one of the major problems facing the tent
show managers is maintaining the quality of their productions.

The Troupe That Failed

I know of one rather ill-assorted troupe with an indifferent kind of
repertoire, which failed miserably when it tried recently to take over
the "established territory" vacated by a first-rate tent repertory company
whose manager had retired. The show drew big crowds on opening nights
but attendance fell steadily thereafter. There could have been only one
answer--the poor quality of its offering.

The play is the big rub. By the end of the war most of the writers who
had produced "standard rep" plays had turned to writing for other mediums,
or to selling shoes.

Broadway plays on the whole have become less and less suited for tent
repertory's family audience. But even those which are suitable cannot
be had anymore for anything like the royalties tent showman can afford.

Tent repertory always has been a "popular price" field, with a top of
not more than 60 cents for reserved seats. While some of the larger shows
may gross more than $125,000 a season, the box-office take for the average
show's season is probably something less than $60,000.

Last year Schaffner offered Brock Pemberton $1,000 for the right to play
Harvey one night a week for 20 weeks--a figure probably double anything
any tent show ever paid for a Broadway hit--and Pemberton did not even
reply.

This summer all of the tent shows are featuring old "standard rep" bills
rewritten to "make them fit present-day audiences," or new plays "put
together from old, sure-fire ingredients" by members of their companies.

Slout has redone a play, Whittlin' which he wrote 25 years ago when he
was doing Lyceum and Chautauqau work. He now calls it A Doctor Falls in
Love. Bisbee has revived a popular tent repertory play of the 1929 season,
Tildy Ann.

Next to getting a play, the biggest problem confronting the shows is
a steady shrinkage of willing and available talent. Many shows dropped
by the wayside in the dreary 1930s and during the war. Consequently, a
lot of people who had looked on repertory as a career had to find other
means of livelihood.

Stars Began in Tent Shows

In earlier days it was not unusual for a performer to move from tent
repertory to more cosmopolitan glory. The late Jeanne Eagles, who originated
the role of Sadie Thompson in Rain, was a graduate of the Dubinsky tents
in Missouri and Oklahoma; Warner Baxter got his start in the North brothers;
Jennifer Jones and Jimmy Wakely, the horse-opera hero, got their first
professional jobs in Sadler's show and Michael North, who has been giving
the bobbysoxers heart throbs, grew up in father Ted's tent show.

But today, though the tent shows each year do attract a few talented
amateurs and an occasional dramatic school graduate, few of the youngsters
who might profit from a few summers under canvas are interested. Today
only two shows--Bisbee's and Brunks's Comedians--are out as long as 35
weeks and although pay is good (up to $175 a week for a team) the short
season is unattractive to many who otherwise might be willing to troupe.

Tent repertory still exists, it seems, because a few hardy professionals
are willing to skimp through the winter clerking in stores, picking up
occasional "school dates" or night-club turns and because vaudeville performers,
who sing on for between-the-acts specialties, are willing to take a whirl
at parts.

Back in the twenties, a tent show could be put on the road for three
to four thousand dollars. Now a truck to haul the tent costs nearly that
much (Bisbee values his equipment at $48,000) and few young men are willing
to take the financial risk, much less endure the great amount of hard,
physical work involved in running a tent show. Only three or four new
shows have entered the field since the end of the war.

Nevertheless, "tent repsters," as Billboard calls them, are far from
pessimistic. They laugh at talk that the movies put them on the skids
and that television will finish the job.

Pictures gave me an awful run for the first few years and gradually shut
me out of some good time," says Rotnour, "but in the last two years they
have taken an awful flop over my territory while I have gone right on,
playing in towns of 700 to 10,000 population with audiences of 300 to
800 per evening."

Some tent show managers report that, while they have "packed 'em in"
this summer, movie houses running in competition to them have had only
"fair" business. Last summer in Missouri, when at least 1,200 people were
watching Schaffner's peripatetic Toby, I checked the movie house across
the square which was playing a first-run picture featuring a well-known
star. All but three seats were empty.

It has been estimated that upwards of five million people, perhaps more,
will witness tent show plays during the 1949 season. As long as that many
paying customers are in sight it is hard to convince tent show people
that repertory is making its last stand. The End